Putting the Ox in Oxbridge: My Visit to the Dark Side

Given my loyalty to Cambridge, I was surprised to find that one of the only cities in England that I still felt a pressing desire to see was Oxford, their long-time rival (in the States, we talk about college rivalries dating back to the Bowl game of ’68 – Oxford and Cambridge have been going at it since the 1200's). So, feeling like a bit of a traitor, I planned a stop in Oxford on my way up to Scotland, just to better inform my conviction of Cambridge superiority ;-)

 On the whole, the trip was successful, but that’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy Oxford. In the end, it just seems that they are in fact two very different universities and cities, so much so that it’s hard to compare the two. Oxford feels much more like a city than Cambridge does – more cars buzzing through, fewer bikes – and the colleges are bigger and grander as well. One thing the two cities definitely share, though, is the amazing quickness with which city fades out again into the country. My first night there, I went for a run along the Oxford Canal on narrow little pathway with the canal on one side and the Castle Mill Stream on the other. Less than 20 minutes later, I was in the open country: horses were grazing in the fields and the uncut grass along either side of the running path was three or four feet high. In the States, cities fade out into suburbia and that fades out into not much at all; I think I would need to run more than a marathon to get from Rice’s campus out to anything like the country.

The highlight of my visit to Oxford, ironically had nothing to do with Oxford, Cambridge, or even British people. It was Google-chatting with Mary Grace only to be interrupted when the guy next to me used the phrase “not a lick of room”- the realization that even here, in the intellectual heartland of England, I was surrounded by the warmth of the American South. 

ps: Note to fellow Rice students - it turns out that Cambridge has a version of "Martel is not a college." They cheer "I'd rather be at Oxford than at John's" (St. John's being the much-hated rival residential college ;-)

Well, I couldn’t spend Independence Day in their country...

I tried several times to use this explanation when asked why I spent 20 hours traveling to spend 72 hours in the US – but I never managed it with a straight face. In truth, the only regret I had when I got my first scholarship was that I would miss July 4^th Fellow’s Weekend at Wiess... so when I got a second grant that also covered airfare, the decision was made. If only for three days, I would be back in Houston.

In the first week of my trip, when I was homesick and scared of all the uncertainties that come with travel, the promise of those three days was a lifeline. Every time I took my vitamins, I was 600 mg of Calcium – half a day – closer to home. Surely it’s crazy to imagine Houston in July as anything like Heaven, but I did. I couldn’t wait to be back.

What was the weirdest thing about being back in the States, you ask? Something that has nothing to do with having travelled internationally for over a month: it was unspeakably weird not to have a car. I lent my baby to my friend Sherry for the summer, so when I flew back into Houston I found myself relying just as much on the generosity of others as I’m forced to when abroad. On the morning of the fourth, I found myself in such distress at making the 20 minute walk to campus in the crazy humid heat that I called one of the Head Fellows and made him send a car to pick me up. I don’t know how anyone without a car survives in this city.

Speaking of that generosity, though, I’d like to send out some Oscar-style thanks to those of you who made my weekend the wonderful holiday that it was. So thank you Erin (Walsh) for you hospitality and delicious air conditioning, Mary Grace just for being in Houston – I loved every second we got to spend together, Joel for the ride from the airport, Richard for taking me back to the airport again, Jordon for indulging all my Dave Matthews talk, Stephen for figuring out how to zip up my bag, Kathryn for driving all the way from Katy for dinner, Kelsey for doing crazy things to your hair just for my amusement (haha), Jesse for not meaning all your inappropriate jokes about hitting on our freshmen, Kimberly for meeting me at the airport, and to Aparna and Veronica for reading this blog and telling me so :-). Y'all made my weekend in Houston the most refreshing, exciting, comforting three days of my summer – I can’t wait to be back again for good. 

The Accidental Suitor: My Jane Austen moment in Bath

In the course of the very limited planning I did for my trip (mostly in the hours before I left for the airport), I faced a critical decision: where should I arrange to be on June 27^th, my 21^st birthday? Ideally, I suppose, I’d be at home, in a country where I’d get IDed, with people who knew it was my birthday, where people even thought a 21^st birthday remarkable. Failing that, I chose Bath.

Bath has what I’ve come to think of as the three criteria of cities worth visiting: history, beauty, and literary connections (Larry McMurtry, it should be noted, is the only person who keeps Houston from failing this test completely). The city centre lies in a valley through which is River Avon winds and from which seven rather steep hills arise. As my hostel and apparently every secondary school in Bath lie in these hills, I spent a great deal more time looking down at Bath than I did actually in it. The first day of hiking around (going up and down those hills definitely felt much more like hiking than walking) I was snapping pictures left and right, but by the end of my six days there, I was almost as blasé as the natives: to find a break in the houses or trees that afforded a break-taking panorama of the city seemed nothing so remarkable at all.

 I spent my birthday walking ten miles down the Kennet & Avon Canal to the nearest town, and when I got back to the hostel, sweaty, tired, and hungry, it was to find that all of my stuff – my books, my backpack, even my drying socks and underwear – had disappeared from my room. It was in the process of getting my things back that I met Graham, the unfortunate hostel worker who happened to be at the desk when I came to retrieve my things (they realized they had put me in the wrong room, so they confiscated all my belongings?? Hostels...). Graham was older than me, shorter than me, and his buzz-cut hair was grayer than mine, but he was helpful and friendly and when he offered to give me some travel tips over a couple of drinks, I thought nothing of it. This is the classic mistake of any heroine: allow yourself to be caught completely by surprise.

The next night after Graham got off of work, I was waiting for him by the hostel mini-bar, guidebook in hand, ready to learn all about the Lake District. But he’d been in the hostel all day – would I mind going somewhere else? Acquiescence being another classic heroine trait, I agreed, and a few minutes later we were headed off to Bristol, a nearby port city. Once there, Graham showed me some of the sights (check out my Bath pictures to see the giant disco ball in a fountain!), until we realized that, as it was a Sunday night and things closed early, we needed to run to get to the bar on time. It was a great little jazz place that boasted live music every night: that night, a one-man blues band was jamming away. Afterwards, he drove me to see the city’s suspension bridge, lit up over the Avon River Gorge. It was all lovely. We did not talk about the Lake District.

We were walking up to the proverbial doorstep (in this case, the doorway to the hostel’s reception) when Graham asked: “Would it be too forward if I asked to kiss you?” My mind was flooded with so many objections clothed in so many clichés that all I could manage to say was an awkward “Yes” (as in, “no”). And finally I’d broken the mold, because while heroines might very well find themselves in awkward positions at the end of accidental dates, I doubt any of them could manage to end the evening quite as ungracefully as I did :-)

Edinburgh: King of the Hill

My introduction to Edinburgh was much like the grand entrance David and I made to Venice all those weeks ago: once again, I opted for taking the nightbus, but instead of going to Glasgow, where I would be staying that night, I continued on to Edinburgh to allow myself a couple extra hours of bumpy bus sleep. 

The city I awoke to find was as steely and gray as the castle that towered over it. Edinburgh Castle rises up out of an inactive volcano, with the 'old town' flowing down from castle like the tail of a comet. That first day, it was hard to look at anything for long without my eyes wandering back to the castle, to the sheer slate edges that are wrapped in a sort of netting, as though without its flimsy support, the fortress would crumble and fall.

Definitely my favorite moment of Edinburgh, and, so far, of my whole trip, was hiking up to Arthur Seat, the highest peak amidst what Wikipedia describes as "a remarkably wild piece of highland landscape" just outside of the city. The wind was so strong that we had to be careful as we crested the various hills; holding a camera steady enough to take a picture was almost impossible to do. But even in the middle of that hurricane, the sun was shining huge slanting shafts that cut through the clouds to give the whole landscape a glittering golden glow. Finally standing on Arthur Seat, I wondered if would-be Edinburgh invaders had felt as I did now: that by hiking 45-minutes up a hill, I had conquered the city and everything in it.